This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Neil deMause in Metro got there first, with a piece headlined Popping the sports bubble :I went to a Mets game last week, and speaking as a Yankee fan, I have to admit that in the battle of the ballparks, the Mets won. Citi Field is far from perfect, but at least it feels like you’re at a baseball park — unlike the new Yankee Stadium, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a new Marriott with a really garish big-screen TV in the lobby.

What I noticed most, though, was something I’d never seen at a baseball game: The upper deck was packed to the gills, while the acres of hyper-pricey seats down below were half-empty. It’s something you first saw in NBA games over the winter, as penny-pinching fans scurried for the rafters.

The Times piles on

Then the Times piled on, in a front-page article today headlined Is This Seat Taken? In Front Rows of New Ballparks, No:Instead, the Mets and the Yankees face a public relations nightmare and possibly millions of dollars in lost revenue after failing to sell about 5,000 tickets — including some of the priciest seats — to each of their first few games after last week’s openers.

The layoffs of staffers working on sponsorships for the New Jersey Nets apparently reflect the new reality.

There are already many questions related to the planned Brooklyn arena, among them Frank Gehry's role and the cost of construction.

Given the example of the new baseball parks, there's less of an appetite for luxury suites. That would mean a decline in both revenues for the developer and the taxes expected. It also suggests that a new cost-benefit analysis is in order.

Fan anger at subsidies

One comment on the Times's web site:Wouldn't feel too sorry for the suits in the Bronx and in Flushing. They are living on the public teat and will profit handsomely no matter what. The continued use of public funds (and that includes the outrageous ability to sell tax-exempt bonds) to benefit private interests is never right. May the Nets never see Brooklyn.P.S. This is not a rant from a sports-hater. Baseball is very important in my life.— freddyrun, Houston, TX

1 comment:

Good thing that barclays center is designed to hold only 18,000 fans for basketball.

A seating capacity of 18,000 would make barclays center the 3rd smallest arena in the nba, behind only amway arena in orlando and arco arena in sacramento.

Orlando has a new 18,500-seat arena under construction that's scheduled to open for the 2010-2011season. Sacramento will either build a new arena for the kings in the next few years or the kings will skip town.

Bottom-line: if barclays center ever got built, it would have the smallest seating capacity of all 30 nba arenas. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of local enthusiasm for 'the brooklyn nets'.